So, 2017 huh? Look, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve really been struggling to come up with some kind of year-end list of pop culture phenomena and detritus that were special to me or that made the year great or whatever, and I just don’t think I can do it. I’ll always have “Twin Peaks,” and this new cinematic Stephen King Renaissance has been pretty cool to watch take off, as well as all the other films I enjoyed (which you can read about here) this year. And sure, I’ve got my albums and songs that I dug on a whole bunch just as I do every year (which you can also read about here, here, and here respectively), but I just can’t summon the power or the energy to write a recap that won’t sound like I’m repeating myself…or that will make up for the general, overwhelming hopelessness and despair that 2017 has been wrought with.

It’s gonna be a long Friday night. Well, not so long as eventful and..what’s the word? ‘divergent” will suffice, I think. Ween are a difficult band to preach to the unbeliever, they’re that guy you’ve known since High School who is not only no-holds-barred hilarious, but his filterless and inappropriate comedic instincts (while seemingly oblivious to societal norms and the due diligence and restraint the rest of us instinctively employ) are derived from a place of rich cultural, intellectual and emotional intelligence. While he’s an anomalous, aberrant champion in this ridiculous existence 99% of the time, this is regularly lost on the general populace. There’ll inevitably be an occasion when you invite him to a house party and he’s already dispensed with the sixpack he threaded through his belt on the walk there, and he hot-knifes all the resin of one of the guests who couldn’t skin it up on his own, before being suddenly inspired to display his acumen for Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, but No Can Do; he attempts to execute the 7 foot, lightbulb-obliterating scissor-kick but misses spectacularly, the momentum of his upswung leg sending him collapsing onto the sofa behind him full of previously giggling girls , whereupon he’s instinctively repelled into a nearby Yucca plant before receiving a bony toed barefoot kick to the cheekbone by the middle class guy who looks – with his blond surfer curtains – like an understudy for that LBJ Ex President out of ‘Point Break’ (’91). You’re permitted to stay, but he of course has to go, so you naturally pledge inebriated allegiance to the exile and wander off together urinating into the cooling evening breeze onto the nocturnal golf course to climb trees and scream at the stars and divulge your innermost torments.

I’m afraid that if you thought you were potentially entering an article detached from a world that’s gone bananas over Star Wars you’re mistaken, I went to see it today. At the risk of coming across like a thrift-store Sith Lord, today’s been a razor blade ticker tape parade. Over the past few months, when our schedules would allow, a few friends and I have been working our way through the previous six films in anticipation of the new release. Before the screening commenced on ‘Jedi night’ last Saturday, one of my friends casually announced that as fate would have it, he had a hospital appointment scheduled after the screening of ‘The Force Awakens’ to discuss a long running chronic complaint he’s been suffering since his early twenties. The upshot of this conversation was that a recent setback and hospitalisation had not been countered as well as medical professionals had hoped, and that beyond that unsuccessful course of action was a disconcerting lack of a plan. My friend said he was just looking forward to seeing Star Wars.

“I’m no synaesthete, but this album sort of sounds like intermittent sunshine over a beautiful deserted landscape.” I’m unable to attribute that quote to its originator having seen it as a tag on Last.fm, simply seconding the motion for lack of anything to rival it. I can come within touching distance of a million different mental images to describe this album every time I listen, but they’re mostly better left unsculpted. We do a lot of dancing about architecture on this site, but its always in furtherance of appealing for people to visit the places we’ve mentally vacationed courtesy of the Artist in question, and I don’t use that descriptive noun lightly when it comes to God and man’s daughter Bjork Gudmundsdottir.

Well, there I was all ready to dive into decoding a new issue of Nameless and, well, Mr. Morrison pretty much did most of the work for me.

Crap.

The enigmatic approach left behind, issue two begins with Nameless and his escorts as they arrive at Paul Darious’s Billionauts base on the dark side of the moon. Once situated we quickly get A LOT more of the Enochian language message we are introduced to in issue #1. We meet Dr. Croft, the base’s former expert on occult matters and see that something has either possessed her or sent her over the edge of sanity. The others on the base have quarantined Dr. Croft and when Burnham flashes to her we see that written on the walls of her cell in what is probably *gag* either shite or blood or a happy mixture of both, what appears to be a continuation of that Enochian message:

I feel a Hipsterish cringe as Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ sounds out over the opening shot of a cloud strewn blue sky, before I remember that I secretly think this is a beautiful song. For a long time, I didn’t even hate Coldplay, I was above all that, they were just an Indie ‘In’ for those younger than me. Of course in recent years I’ve found their self important, remedial plinkety-plonking bombast grossly offensive, but that’s just an irrelevant by-product of experience and the slow creeping cynicism that heralds the beginning of the inevitable rendezvous with decrepitude. As Coldplay serenade the theater, you’ll have to forego a certain amount of cynicism. We’re looking down on 5 year old Mason, unfettered by such trivialities, lying on his back on serene grass musing on the incongruous blue above as it becomes clear that this musical cue is a signifier for this place in time, 2002.

The drum kit is sentient and coated in tin foil, its human overseers gaunt and warped from light years of ST37 abuse. These two jumpsuited mutants go by the earth-names Damon Edge and Helios Creed and their clingfilm (Saran wrap) skin is pallid from sunlight estrangement. While Punk was pissing and whinging about the inequity of modern life, Chrome were taking the same musical aesthetics and shaping it into a future we were expecting after the promise of late 60s space exploration and the ensuing Universe of cautionary and allegorical Sci Fi, courtesy of some of the period’s drugs of choice.